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src/posts/2024-08-10-i-wasted-half-my-summer-on-nixos.md
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---
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author: "Youwen Wu"
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authorTwitter: "@youwen"
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desc: "some thoughts"
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image: "./images/gradient-ascent.jpg"
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keywords: "haskell, blog, functional programming"
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lang: "en"
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title: "i wasted half my summer setting up NixOS"
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updated: "2024-05-25T12:00:00Z"
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---
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Here's what I've been up to since the start of the summer: after a month long
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fender-bender with functional programming and the mathematicians up in the ivory
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tower at Haskell Industries™, I spent a month setting up an esoteric Linux
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distribution likely conceived of by bitter Haskell theorists who were fed up
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with the fact that the real world and computers were stateful and wanted to do
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something about it.
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This distribution, of course, was NixOS. And I guess you could consider the
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following either a case study or an autopsy of a real user of it.
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## what even is NixOS?
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It's somewhat difficult to explain the concept of Nix/NixOS to even the average
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Linux user. It's simple, really: Nix is a tool described and developed by Eelco
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Dolstra in his Ph.D thesis, _The Purely Functional Software Deployment Model_,
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where he shows how to implement a tool which atomically resolves dependencies
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through the use of derivations, which are pure functions that encode the build
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process of a package...
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The majority of readers have likely left at this point immediately after the
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mention of _Ph.D thesis_. If you are still reading, I presume that the previous
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word salad either made some semblance of sense to you, or you're masochistic
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enough that you're willing to sit through a seminar about esoteric and
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overcomplicated concepts - both great qualities for a Nix user to have.
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First of all, if you've never heard of Nix, it may be hard to get a straight
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answer for what it is. And that's because it's many different things. Nix, by
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itself, is a package manager which can be installed on any distro that can also
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help create _reproducible_ environments declaratively. This means that you can
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use it to install packages like a regular package manager:
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```bash
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# Arch Linux
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$ pacman -S neofetch
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# Nix
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$ nix-env -i neofetch
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```
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Or, you can define a shell environment in a `nix` file, and it will fetch all
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the required packages and throw you into an environment with them available,
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_without polluting your global PATH_. This is powerful for specifying all the
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packages needed to develop on a project, with their exact version, and have them
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all automatically available to developers without affecting their system
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installations. This feature of Nix is used to manage
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[this blog](https://github.com/youwen5/blog), in fact. You can also define build
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scripts in this file, so Nix can also be used as a simple build tool, like
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**Make**.
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There are many more features of Nix, but I don't intend for this post to be a
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full introduction to Nix or even a simple tutorial. There's enough of that over
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at [nix.dev](https://nix.dev/) and the wonderful
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[NixOS and Flakes Book](https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/).
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But the defining factor of Nix, which makes it different from other tools like
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`direnv` which do similar things, is its **reproducible builds**. Through a
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concept called "derivations", Nix encodes _exactly_ how a package is built, down
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to the patches and compiler options. It also requires the exact dependencies be
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specified - Nix cannot access system-wide programs while building.
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This means that the slightest change to a build process will result in a
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different derivation. And this means that, in theory, if a derivation builds on
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one machine, it should also build on every other machine, exactly the same way.
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It solves the "it works on my machine issue", without any virtualisation a la
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Docker.
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### NixOS is a different kind of operating system
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Most Linux distributions are really just some set of base software and a package
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manager (usually the defining aspect for power users). NixOS is a Linux
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distribution that uses Nix as its principle package manager. But it's also more
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than that.
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The principle issue I have with Arch (and every other distro) is that
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fundamentally, it pretty much does what every distro after Slackware has tried
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to do: provide the user with a base working system and a package manager that
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can efficiently install and manage software. Arch just happens to contain a
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pretty decent package manager with massive repositories and a minimal set of
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base software, which aligns exactly with the goal of \*nix enthusiasts.
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When I say that NixOS is a new kind of operating system, I don't mean that it
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has a novel kernel, or even a new init system or completely new userspace
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components. At the end of the day, you'll be running the same Linux applications
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on the same Linux kernel you know. Strictly speaking, it is just another set of
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base packages running on the Linux kernel, with the Nix package manager.
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What makes NixOS different is its completely new approach to system management
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and configuration from everything else that has been tried in the last two
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decades [^1]. In a traditional distribution, you are provided with a tool to
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fetch packages and install them into your system. That's all well and good, but
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what about the rest? How do you manage the rest of your system configuration?
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How do you manage already installed packages, like updating or removing them
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cleanly? How do you deal with a system in a broken state, or with mismatching
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dependency versions (the so-called dependency hell)? As a user, how can you set
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up a system from scratch automatically with all the little things configured
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like you want?
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Nix and NixOS claims to solve all of these issues and more. Let's see if it
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lives up to its promises.
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### system configuration
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Most critical system components need some form of configuration, usually by text
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file. Most distributions provide no built-in way to manage these. Also,
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third-party solutions are mostly unwieldy.
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[^1]:
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Well, there's the _other distro_: [GNU Guix](https://guix.gnu.org/)
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(pronounced _geeks_), which is a fork of Nix released in 2019 that aims to
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achieve similar goals.
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